


Acid and Flowers

by cursed_core



Series: The Marvel Archives [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:08:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25961863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cursed_core/pseuds/cursed_core
Summary: A sharing of nightmares.
Relationships: Natasha Romanova/Clint Barton
Series: The Marvel Archives [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876885
Kudos: 5





	Acid and Flowers

Natalia slams awake from a nightmare, waking up Clint in the bed next to her. He immediately jumps into action taking her hand. “Hey Nat are you okay?” She doesn’t answer. “Nat?” 

“I… think so. Just another bad dream.” She sounds hollow trying to wake up a bit.

Clint pulls her into his lap, holding her close. “Want to talk about it?” She shakes her head as he rests his chin on Natalia’s head. “What do you want to talk about?”

“What are your nightmares like?”

“Nat…”

“Please? You know mine.” 

He gives a nod after eyeing the neon alarm clock out of the corner of his eye that blinks at 4:33am. “They are complicated.”

“So are mine.”

“Yeah that they are.” Clint thinks for a moment. “It is the same nightmare every time. Always starts the same way. I am looking in an unfamiliar mirror and I am just a child but I have my current mind. It is a major disconnect and already terrifying. I always turn and leave the tent that was my home and enter the big one where a crowd already exists. The crowd always has no faces. There is always this weird stench in the air that I can never place. It is always so weird. Everything there just always feels so distorted. It gets even more so when the main events start and those faces I can see but they look like plastic mannequins. There are two clowns and always a two headed person who has acid poured over her again and again. There is laughter erupting from the crowd like it is the most hilarious thing instead of truly disturbing like it should be.”

“Did this happen to you?”

“I… I don’t actually know which makes the next parts even worse. She gets dragged to a back area before the clowns start beating the shit out of each other. Blood flying and everything so I escaped out of the ring to where the two headed lady crawled. She is laying face down in the dirt. I don’t know if she is alive or dead but there is someone with lobster hands that gestures me over to him. You can smell how he is rotting and the skin is sloughing off of him to the point where you can see muscle and bone in some areas. He asks me to start sticking flowers into his infected acid wounds. I know I didn’t want that same fate. The one where you walk around as a rotting corpse so I listened. I started stabbing this man with infected acid burns and weaving the stems into his skin, all that flowed out was a mixture of pus and blood. The mixture eventually began to cover my hands to the point where the flowers became slick with it then I moved onto the next. And then the next. There is just a constant gagging stench filling everything. Eventually the woman on the ground groans and crawls over to us. She looks up from the dirt ground, particles sticking to her sticky fresh wounds and no longer does she have a face. Neither of them do. She starts screaming and crying with the most horrible noises begging me to kill. To just end her. That is always when I wake up. I know that at the end whatever she is, she isn’t human anymore.”

Natalia cuddles up even closer to him. “What if this actually happened and this is the only way your own brain can remind you? What if you can only see it in your head because it is too grotesque for being awake?”

“Sadly I don’t work like that, Nat. Any and all trauma like that sticks close to me and is a part of who I am. I know you get that though. You went through that on your own in the hellscape that is the Red Rooms… although you haven’t told me much about it.”

“I can’t exactly talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“It puts everyone at more risk then you will ever know. You see enough of what it did to me anyway one the outside. You have seen my scars.” 

Clint squeezes her tightly. “Nightmare for nightmare then? What woke you up?”

“A memory that everything is hazy around except for that one. That one moment in the infirmary. Everything to that point is also a nonexistent blur and I will take it as I don’t need to think about it. I really don’t need to know what happened to make me end up in that bed but this one is also always the same when I come across it. I wake up squinting with the bright fluorescent lights, feeling dizzy. Zima is at my bedside and gives me the smallest hint of a smile which is the most disturbing thing for me. He shouldn’t smile… not like that. I look past him and there are guards looking in, holding weapons. They look so stern. Then the pain hits me and I start crying. My abdomen hurts, my bones ache. He looks down at me and whispers ‘little spider, I am glad to see that you are alive.’ In the sickest most mocking tone I have ever heard from him.”

“I can’t believe Bucky would sound like that…”

“It isn’t Bucky. Yes they share a face and a body but when Zima is there he is no longer human. No longer there. Something else is in control.”

“Yeah… that makes more sense. Sorry for interrupting please continue.”

“I start to panic. That is when the panic realization sets in and I try to pull away from him, and that is when the realization that I am strapped down sets in. That is also when he says the most terrifying thing I have ever heard in my life. ‘Milashka…’ which in English means cutie. He goes on. ‘I want to see you fall apart from the cycle of abuse. Again and again. I want to see you torn apart and then rebuilt just to see how incredible you can be.’ He says this while reaching out and softly stroking my cheek, not with his metal arm but the flesh one. It feels so much more unnerving like that. That is when I started to cry. Zima responds to my crying with. ‘It is going to be okay. I will take care of you.’ In those moments I know I will die if I don’t do something so I start screaming. I scream at him not to fucking touch me. To get away from me. To tell him he can’t do anything to protect me as I have myself. There is a flurry of movement to where the nurse starts sedating me and those guards looking in rush over, weapons pointed directly at him. When everything fades to darkness it is a few seconds then I hear a man screaming. When he starts screaming that is when I wake up.”

“Is the man screaming Zima?”

“Yes.” 

Clint speaks in an understanding tone. “Thank you for trusting me with any of this. I can see why that is a nightmare, and I can see why they are more frequent.”

“With him coming out of retirement for this, yeah.”

“I promise I will protect you, Nat.”

“You know that the same will always go to you, Clint.”

“I know. You don’t have to say it for my own comfort though.”

By the time they are done talking they just sit in silence in Natalia's small apartment. Together they watch the clock go from 5:00am to 6:00am to 7:00am. They don't move from their cuddled together position unless they need to shift with the morning light filtering in to prevent themselves from getting blinded.


End file.
